SUCCESS WITH HONOR: A COMMENTARY ON COLLEGE SPORTS

I’m a former college athlete. In fact, athletics paid for a large portion of my education and for that, I am forever grateful. I loved playing and to get an education in exchange for playing the game I loved at a high level hardly seemed an even trade. Don’t get me wrong, it was extremely difficult at times—going to lift at about the same time other students were just getting back to the dorms after a night out, classes all day followed by practice followed by a three hour chemistry lab, starting the day at 6AM and not ending until 10:30PM three nights a week for four years, missing classes for road games, taking a Virology final on which my graduation hinged in a hotel room at Hofstra during the conference tournament (thank you for passing me, Dr. Simmons!). But in the end, I definitely got the better end of the deal. Non-athletes who blindly assert that athletes have it easy know nothing about the commitment it takes to be a college athlete and I put no credence into their uninformed claims. It may be true in some cases, but the vast majority of student athletes don’t play for big time FBS schools or in big time basketball programs. The vast majority of athletes are just doing what they love and if they’re very lucky, they get an education paid for in exchange for their talent. Athletics holds a unique value to a person's education and life that you can't get from anything else.  

With this primer, my criticisms on college sports pertain to the overinflated programs that exist solely as farm programs for the NFL or NBA, the schools whose very identification and existence depend on its football program—the schools where the institution of athletics has become more important than ethics and basic human decency. Penn State has of late become the poster child for protecting the institution at all costs. The school is the definition of institutional hegemony gone berserk.

The NCAA isn’t exactly a clean organization, itself. The organization is all about making money and not about the student athlete as it likes to advertise. But the corruption of the NCAA isn’t the point here. In the case of Penn State, the NCAA got this one right and for that, they should be recognized. You can’t say with a straight face that the NCAA can come down on institutions for giving free cars, houses, texting, etcetera, and not come down on an institution that harbored a child rapist.  

The worst criminal in this whole melodrama is the child rapist, Jerry Sandusky. The Penn State punishment isn’t about him. He’s been convicted and will serve his time (hopefully to be given the same respect by his fellow convicts that he gave his child victims). But the leadership at Penn State was essentially complicit in the cover up of his disgusting crimes, according to the Freeh report (and to those Nittany Lion faithful who are absurdly claiming that Joe Paterno was just a football coach—get real and stop lying. You know better).

Why the cover up? To avoid bad publicity. Well ain’t karma a bitch?

To see students in tears over NCAA sanctions, to hear an alumni compare the punishment to 9/11, to hear other coaches defending Joe Paterno not only shows just how deep the institutional mentality runs, but it’s insulting to human decency and it’s especially insulting to Jerry Sandusky’s child victims. That there are those in Happy Valley who are more concerned with the reputation of Penn State and Joe Paterno and his wins record is simply offensive. 

No matter how much good you may have done in your life, covering up the rape of children and allowing it to continue, allowing a child rapist access to a venue to commit their crime for more than a decade wipes out all of that good. That’s the trump card. Protecting a pedophile in order to save face and safeguard an institution will always outweigh any good you’ve done in life.

So to those who say that it’s unfair that an innocent community and innocent students are being punished—that is the result when the walls finally come crashing down on the institution that's become too big to fail…collateral damage. But your blame is misplaced. Instead of blaming those who handed out the punishment, blame those who created this culture at Penn State where covering up child rape was deemed necessary to protect the institution. Instead of blind allegiance, spit out the Kool-Aid and try honest discrimination. Who is really at fault here? Is it the NCAA or the over-empowered, arrogant, and hypocritical leaders at Penn State who the put bottom line ahead of the safety of children?

The situation at Penn State University will forever serve as the greatest example of what can go wrong when sports becomes too big. Joe Paterno was a God in Happy Valley and, mind bogglingly enough, he always will be to those who drank the Kool Aid. Had Paterno (et al) lived up to his own standard of “success with honor” and turned in Sandusky when he learned of what was going on then he might have earned his status. Instead, his lack of action showed how small of a man he really was. And this is the problem with the American culture of hero worship.

The question remains if the NCAA’s Penn State decision will serve to redefine the culture of college sports. Institutions should always hold education in higher regard than its athletics programs. Unfortunately athletic programs have become too big to fail at the institutions where the university has become synonymous with its football program. And now the price has been revealed—an institution willing to cover up child rape to protect its bottom line. It’s a money-driven culture and now colleges are going to need to ask themselves if they’re willing to take a little off their bottom lines. And we, the American public, are going to need to ask ourselves what we're willing to accept from our beloved teams in the name of winning.